Surgeon General's Warning: Not for the weak at heart.

I was going to post something last night, but my new Canadian friend Andrew was on the only working computer for hours on end and I finally got tired. So now it's time for an update from the last few days, and I apologize for the length it may end up being. It was a packed and crazy weekend.

Our floor and hallway has a bunch of Korean's living there as part of the DTS program, and Friday night they hosted a "Korean Love Feast", where the cafeteria was decked out in the Korean flag and reassembled into long tables for feasting. The food was amazing, especially because it was two hours late since the power in the building went out. The only bad part....our team is the dinner clean up crew. With probably two or three times as many people at dinner as normal, and with the Korean food finding its way all over the walls and floors of the kitchen, it was the most insane 2 hours of my life trying to clean it all up. Our team had recently lost the Dutchies, so with more to clean and less people, the piles of dishes and counters of food never seemed to lighten up. Thanks to a few friends we made and a group from York, England, we finally managed to clean up the craziness and join into the rest of the Korean festivities. The games were hilarious- guys bent over sticking their head into a place not normally visited and other guys jumping on their backs could only be described as....hysterical! We laughed a lot watching them play. Then there was a makeshift board game with sticks, and despite Nick's attempts to make the game more fun by purposefully losing a turn, my team ended up winning. Victory is sweet. :)

Saturday. We saw the banners for Gay Pride being put up our first few days here, heard the sounds of the music being warmed up, saw abnormal amounts of people now walking the streets and pink balloons hung up all over the city, but nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared us for what we walked into. Day started out with prayer in the Tabernacle, then lunch, then back for more prayer and worship, where Ryan and I found ourselves leading with Bert and a guy that plays there all the time. We had dinner, then had a little "meeting" to talk about the typical church response to homosexuality and what our response should be, how we can approach the upcoming events, and some simple instructions. As "Mom", I put the kabash on the boys going in the Red Light District, knowing that would be a crazy and difficult area to stay focused. It wasn't because I didn't trust them or didn't trust God, I just didn't feel the need to give any more visuals to them. So, instead, us girls went. Bert took the guys through Dam Square to just walk and pray, Ryan and Cam tried to find the churches for Sunday and ended up walking through some serious parties, and Luiza, Shey and I went into the Red Light District.

Words cannot describe what was happening there. My first trip in there was during the late afternoon/early evening, so the windows were not full yet and not too many people were out. I had read before though that the district really heats up around 11pm. It was around 9pm when we walked in, and I think because of the Gay Pride festivals the heat was really rising fast. I've encountered "evil" before, felt it in a person or in a place that needed prayer, but walking into the district felt like a 50 mph wind hitting me straight in the chest with pure, unabashed evil. We walked, we prayed, we walked, we prayed. The feeling of sickness and brokenness at what we saw never left. The whole evening I spent at war with myself, wanting to run as far away from that place as possible to relieve the darkness, but knowing that I have Light in me that could fight the battle going on. We prayed for our guys that were walking around and seeing things that they'd never seen before. We prayed for the tourists and men who come into the district just for sightseeing and end up getting hooked. We prayed for change, but the sounds around us kept burning in our ears almost mocking us; Men being talked into entering a window, a large man in a brand new suit asking me if I wanted to come in for a peep show, families walking around like tourists and looking in the sex shops, and drunk men and women staggering into gay porn shops. We walked as three girls, carrying the love of Christ in us, three tiny specks of true light trying to shine against the neon lights and flashing pictures. I couldn't cry, I was pushed past crying and into complete despair. Praying didn't seem to be enough anymore. Looking back now, I'm still just trusting that it actually was enough, knowing that nothing changed except maybe our hearts. It was a wild experience and one I'm not keen on having again for a little while.

Luiza and I walked Shey back to the train station, then sat in the YWAM cafe for a few minutes to get some perspective. The boys were already back since we actually lost track of time and were almost 20 minutes late, but they had already talked and processed their evenings which apparently were just as rough as ours. They had accidentally wandered into the District, and only one block in was enough to really wrench on them emotionally. I could see it in their faces. I think that each person on our team was forced to grow an incredible amount that night, and I'm actually pretty proud of each of them.

Sunday was a REALLY rad day. We went to an old Anglican church with the tiny rows and the knee rests (that actually came right to my shins because my legs are so short) and gorgeous stained glass windows. We met a guy named Gerald from Northern Ireland about 20 minutes before, and heard his really cool story about having traveled the last 24 years and recently became a Christian about two weeks ago. Awesome guy. The church was amazing, but my only complaint was that they had already done away with hymnals and used a projection screen. The songs were done with only a guitar and two singers, but were still traditional hymns. The corporate prayer and recitations were actually extremely refreshing somehow, and the message was even better. A lady with a beautiful British accent read the entire story of Noah in Genesis, then the message was given with some typical bullet points, which ended by pointing the whole thing back to Christ. I loved every minute of it. The guy who took us to play soccer on Thursday is a regular there and shared some pictures from his recent trip to China, and we met a few other really cool Dutch people.

At night, we went to the Zolder church, which a few people on our team helped build last year. It's more of a cafe church, with tables and coffee and a really relaxed setting. I liked it, but felt way too American. The teaching was topical, pretty basic and not too inspiring, but I'm sure it reaches the crowd they are trying to appeal to very well. Our team met afterwards and talked over the different churches, what we liked and didn't like, things we noticed and observed, and then shared our different stories from the Gay Pride night before. Again, I have seen so much growth in some of these people, and it's a really cool process to watch.

Ryan and I met up with Maarten later on and talked over the camp. He shared how he thought it went, gave us some good feedback, and then we watched soccer on a huge screen. Great night.

Sheesh, this is seriously long again! Today was a free day-mostly just went shopping at the different markets. Skirt and I had a shopping list we tried to accomplish and almost got it finished. There were these huge coffee mugs he had pointed out a few days ago, and somehow it took us almost an hour to find them. But they are seriously cool, well worth the walk. Cam got to see his family's castle in the Netherlands, which made him the happiest man on the planet, and I'm not joking. He's still smiling like a giddy little boy about it. I'm so glad it worked out for him to see it. He's been a great help on this trip, and I was really hoping he'd get to go.

Tomorrow we are taking a canal tour with the team, getting one last feel for the city before we leave. We want to continue to find ways to lift the city up in prayer. Then we are heading out to Cross Culture again to visit our Dutch friends at their Youth Group. Should be a great day. I hope to be able to write again before we leave...